I am the US Business Editor of the Telegraph newspapers and website. Based in New York since August 2007, I've had a ring-side seat for the near-downfall of Wall Street, and the US recession. Here I hope to dig a little deeper, highlighting stories that are less mainstream, as well as writing about the lighter side of life in the Big Apple.

Tiger Woods: which sponsors will keep him – and which will ditch him?

Two weeks into the scandal, and we still don't know what lasting financial damage the revelations will do to "brand Tiger". With management consultants Accenture becoming the first of his major corporate sponsors to ditch Tiger Woods, the question is: who will be next?

His main sponsor, Nike, with whom he has a $40m-a-year deal, is unlikely to cave in under pressure. Phil Knight, Nike’s chairman, has already come out in support of Woods, referring to the golfer’s infidelity as a ‘minor blip’ in the scheme of things in an interview with the SportsBusiness Journal.

Nike is somewhat famous for standing by its man – the case of Michael Vick, the American footballer jailed for his involvement in dog-fighting, is a case in point. Although it severed its ties with the quarterback after he was implicated, this October it emerged that Nike was supplying Vick with products, although vehemently stressing it was not sponsoring him.

Knight’s presumably thinks that not only will the media’s obsession with Woods eventually blow over, but that in the scheme of things the 33-year-old probably has at least another 20 years of professional golf left in him, which equates to another 20 years of revenue generation.

Not every sponsor is quite so willing to play the long game, however. Reports emerged late on Monday that watchmaker Tag Heuer is now reconsidering its earlier decision to stand by Woods. Originally Tag had said that Woods’s alleged extra-marital affairs were “not our business,” but by Monday night it had changed its position, issuing a statement to say that “over the coming weeks we will assess our options with Tiger Woods and IMG [Woods’ agent] regarding our long-term relationship.”

Tag is unlikely to be the last. In a world focused on reputation and saleability, companies who have backed Woods for his clean image are being forced to rethink whether this publicity will help or hinder sales. While his sponsorship by Gillette won’t probably stop most men from buying its shaving products, the company is already so concerned that it has said it won’t air television ads he filmed for its Fusion line of razors.

Sure, the fact that Woods may have had relationships with as many ten women who are not his wife may not affect consumer’s choices when buying something as relatively basic as a Nike shoe. But when a mother sees Electronic Arts’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game on her son’s Christmas wish list this holiday season, will she think twice about buying it for him? Maybe.

The answer to all this, of course, is that nobody knows what impact all this will have a personal brand estimated to have netted $1bn before the recent events.

It is that doubt – a nagging doubt that has already meant Woods’s once omnipresent face has been erased from ad breaks on America television since Thanksgiving – which could inflict far more permament injuries on Woods than those he suffered on that infamous Friday morning.